The riskiest system is the one you *think* you can trust. Say it in encryption: the least secure encryption is encryption that has unknown flaws. Because, in the belief that your communication or data is protected, you feel it’s safe to indulge in what in other contexts would be obviously risky behavior. Think of it like an unseen hole in a condom.
This has always been the most dangerous aspect of the UK government’s insistence that its technical capability notices remain secret. Whoever alerted the Washington Post to the notice Apple received a month ago commanding it to weaken its Advanced Data Protection performed an important public service. Now, Carly Page reports at TechCrunch based on a blog posting by security expert Alec Muffett, the UK government is recognizing that principle by quietly removing from its web pages advice to use that same encryption that was directed at people whose communications are at high risk – such as barristers and other legal professionals. Apple has since withdrawn ADP in the UK.
More important long-term, at the Financial Times, Tim Bradshaw and Lucy Fisher report that Apple has appealed the government’s order to the Investigatory Powers Tribunal. This will be, as the FT notes, the first time government powers under the Investigatory Powers Act (2016) to compel the weakening of security features will be tested in court. A ruling that the order was unlawful could be an important milestone in the seemingly interminable fight over encryption.
I’ve long had the habit of doing minor corrections on Wikipedia – fixing typos, improving syntax – as I find them in the ordinary course of research. But recently I have had occasion to create a couple of new pages, with the gratefully-received assistance of a highly experienced Wikipedian. At one time, I’m sure this was a matter of typing a little text, garlanding it with a few bits of code, and garnishing it with the odd reference, but standards have been rising all along, and now if you want your newly-created page to stay up it needs a cited reference for every statement of fact and a minimum of one per sentence. My modest pages had ten to 20 references, some servicing multiple items. Embedding the page matters, too, so you need to link mentions to all those pages. Even then, some review editor may come along and delete the page if they think the subject is not notable enough or violates someone’s copyright. You can appeal, of course…and fix whatever they’ve said the problem is.
It should be easier!
All of this detailed work is done by volunteers, who discuss the decisions they make in full view on the talk page associated with every content page. Studying the more detailed talk pages is a great way to understand how the encyclopedia, and knowledge in general, is curated.
Granted, Wikipedia is not perfect. Its policy on primary sources can be frustrating, and errors in cited secondary sources can be difficult to correct. The culture can be hostile if you misstep. Its coverage is uneven, But, as Margaret Talbot reports at the New Yorker and Amy Bruckman writes in her 2022 book, Should You Believe Wikipedia?, all those issues are fully documented.
Early on, Wikipedia was often the butt of complaints from people angry that this free encyclopedia made by *amateurs* threatened the sustainability of Encyclopaedia Britannica (which has survived though much changed). Today, it’s under attack by Elon Musk and the Heritage Foundation, as Lila Shroff writes at The Atlantic. The biggest danger isn’t to Wikipedia’s funding; there’s no offer anyone can make that would lead to a sale. The bigger vulnerability is the safety of individual editors. Scold they may, but as a collective they do important work to ensure that facts continue to matter.
Firefox users are manifesting more and more unhappiness about the direction Mozilla is taking with Firefox. The open source browser’s historic importance is outsized compared to its worldwide market share, which as of February 2025 is 2.63%, according to Statcounter. A long tail of other browsers are based on it, such as LibreWolf, Waterfox, and the privacy-protecting Tor.
The latest complaint, as Liam Proven and Thomas Claburn write at The Register is that Mozilla has removed its commitment not to sell user data from Firefox’s terms and conditions and privacy policy. Mozilla responded that the company doesn’t sell user data “in the way that most people think about ‘selling data'” but needed to change the language because of jurisdictional variations in what the word “sell” means. Still, the promise is gone.
This follows Mozilla’s September 2024 decision, reported by Richard Speed at The Register, to turn on by default a “privacy-preserving feature” to track users that led the NGO noyb to file a complaint with the Austrian data protection authority. And a month ago, Mark Hachman reported at PC World that Mozilla is building access to third-party generative AI chatbots into Firefox, and there are reports that it’s adding “AI-powered tab grouping.
All of these are basically unwelcome, and of all organizations Mozilla should have been able to foresee that. Go away, AI.
Molly White is expertly covering the Trump administration’s proposed “US Crypto Reserve”. Remains only to add Rachel Maddow, who compared it to having a strategic reserve of Beanie Babies.
Illustrations:: Beanie baby pelican.
Wendy M. Grossman is the 2013 winner of the Enigma Award. Her Web site has an extensive archive of her books, articles, and music, and an archive of earlier columns in this series. She is a contributing editor for the Plutopia News Network podcast. Follow on Mastodon or Bluesky.